There are millions of small businesses in the United States. These businesses range from services such as but not limited dry cleaning to restaurants. Depending upon the market, many of these businesses must compete aggressively for customers. Standard methods of attracting customers have been utilized for decades and typically include radio, television and print ads. It is also common practice for business to provide coupons that are made available through coupon books, newspaper and other media. With the proliferation of social media, businesses now must compete and attract customers leveraging the various social media platforms. Social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and SnapChat have millions of participants that regularly post short messages that are typically accompanied by photographic images. Social media platforms drive a sense of connectivity that if properly leverage can be utilized by businesses to drive business and customer loyalty.
Conventional loyalty marketing programs utilize loyalty cards and other similar techniques to track, maintain and reward customers for purchases. These programs, while successful, lack the intimacy and immediacy that social media platforms can provide. Over seventy percent of the population now has a smartphone, which are equipped with cameras. Utilization of the camera to send a photographic image of where a person is or what they are doing is very common. Many times these images occur at businesses such as but not limited to restaurants. Conventional marketing methods are unable to leverage the use of photographic images transferred by users of social media.
Accordingly, there is a need for a software application that is operable to integrated with social media platforms wherein the software application will provide image overlays and upon use of the image overlay by a consumer that consumer will receive a loyalty reward to be accumulated for future purchases at the business.